‘Yes, indeed. I’ve had him on board my ship, too — often and often. I’ve had him on board in all his flowing Bedouin robes with the silver of his great curved khanjar knife gleaming at his girdle and the black agal of Arabia round the kaffyah that covered his head; yes, and holding court on my own boat deck with the prayer mats out and his bodyguard all round him, armed to the teeth.’
‘A sort of Lawrence?’ I suggested. ‘Well …’ He sounded doubtful. ‘He hasn’t quite that standing with the political crowd. Too much of an Arab.
Changing his religion like that, it made a difference, you see. But the oil boys all treat him like God, of course — or used to. But for him the Gulfoman Oilfields Development Company wouldn’t have had a single concession out there. And then there was his theory — the Whitaker Theory, they called it. He believed that the proved oil-bearing country that runs down from Iraq through Kuwait, Dahran, Bahrain and Qattar would be found to continue, swinging south-east along the line of the Jebel mountains, through Buraimi and into the independent sheikhdom of Saraifa.
Well, there’s no knowing whether a man’s right about a thing like that, except by prospecting and drilling. And there was Holmes, you see — he’d had the same sort of bee-in-his-bonnet about Bahrain and he’d been proved right.’ ‘And Whitaker wasn’t?’ I prompted, for he had paused, his mind engrossed in the past.
‘No. It cost the Company a lot of money and nothing but dry wells for their trouble. And now things are changing out there.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘There’s a new type of man coming to the top of these Middle East oil companies, technical men who understand oil, but not the Arab. Whitaker and the world he represents — it’s doomed, you know; finished. You can’t lord it in the deserts of Arabia, not now, with the oil flowing and half the world trying to grab a stake in it. And he’s the manner of a ruling prince, you know. He might have been descended from the Prophet himself the way he behaved at times.’
It was an extraordinary picture that Griffiths had drawn for me. When he left to go back to his ship I felt that my drab office was the brighter for the colour his musical tongue had brought into it. I put some more coal on the fire and settled down to finish the day’s work.
It was about half an hour later that I was interrupted by the sound of the street door bell. It startled me, for I very seldom have a caller after office hours except by appointment and a glance at my diary confirmed that I’d no appointment for that evening.
My visitor proved to be a girl, and as she stood there in the driving sleet, clutching her bicycle, she seemed vaguely familiar. She had the sort of face that comes together around the nose and mouth, a face that was attractive, rather than pretty, its composition based on the essential of bone formation. She smiled, a little nervously, a flash of white teeth, the bright gleam of pale eyes. I remember that it was her eyes that attracted me at the time. She was just a kid and she was brimming over with health and vitality. ‘Mr Grant? I’m Susan Thomas. Can I speak to you a moment, please?’ The words came in a quick rush, breathless with hurrying.
‘Of course.’ I held the door open for her. ‘Come in.’
‘May I put my b-bike inside?’ There was a natural hesitancy in her voice that was oddly attractive. ‘I had one stolen a few weeks back.’ She wheeled it in and as I took her through to my office, she said, ‘I was so afraid you’d have left and I didn’t know where you lived.’
In the hard glare of my office lighting I was able to see her clearly. The beaky nose, the strong jaw, they were both there, recognizable now. But in her these facial characteristics were softened to femininity. Unlike her brother, I could see no resemblance to the mother. ‘It’s about your brother, I suppose?’
She nodded, shaking the sleet from her blonde hair whilst her long, quick fingers loosened the old fawn coat she wore. ‘I only just got back from the Infirmary. Mother’s beside herself. I had great difficulty-’ She hesitated, a moment of uncertainty as her clear wide eyes stared and she made up her mind about me. ‘She — she’s reached an odd age, if you know what I mean. This is just too much for her.’
Nineteen years old, and she knew everything about life, all the hard, unpleasant facts. ‘Are you a nurse?’ I asked her.
Training to be.’ She said it with a touch of pride. And then: ‘You’ve got to do something about him, Mr Grant. find him, stop him from trying to kill his — from killing somebody else.’
I stared at her, appalled. ‘What are you talking about?’ I said. She was over-dramatizing, of course. ‘You’ve heard about your-’ I stopped there, uncertain what to call him. ‘About Mr Thomas?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded, her face as withdrawn as her Brother’s had been, set and white. ‘Mother told me.’
The hospital phoned her then?’
‘About half an hour ago. He died in the ambulance they said.’ There was no emotion in her voice, but then her lip trembled slightly. ‘It’s David I’m worried about.’
‘I was just going down to the police station,’ I said. ‘It was an accident, of course, but there’s always the chance that the police may view it differently.’
‘He’s got a bad record, you know. And they never got an together. Of course,” she added, ‘I knew he wasn’t my rather — my real father, that is.’
‘Your mother told you, did she?’ I was thinking that it was odd she should have told her daughter and not her son. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘She never told me. But it’s something you know, by instinct, sort of.’
Then why in heaven’s name didn’t your brother know?’ I said.
‘Oh well, boys are so slow, you know. And it’s not something you can just blurt out, is it, Mr Grant? I mean, it’s something you feel, deep inside, and it’s sort of secret.’ And then she said, ‘What will he do, do you think? Was he serious when he said he’d kill him? I wasn’t there, you see. But Mother is convinced he meant it.’
‘Kill who?’ I said.
‘His — my father. Colonel Whitaker. He swore he’d kill him, didn’t he? That’s what Mother says. You were there. Did he say that?’
‘Well, yes,’ I nodded. ‘But I didn’t take it very seriously. It had all come as a bit of a shock to him. Besides,’ I added, ‘there’s not much he can do about it at the moment, even if he were serious. And by the time he’s released, he’ll have had a chance to get used to the idea.’
She stared at me. ‘You haven’t heard then?’
‘Heard what?’
‘David’s escaped.’
‘Escaped?’ So that was why she was here. The stupid, crazy young fool! ‘How do you know he’s escaped?’
‘The police just phoned. They said he’d escaped from a police car and that it was our duty to inform them if he returned to the house. That’s why I came to see you. Mother’s almost out of her mind. You see, it isn’t only David she’s worrying about. It’s this Colonel Whitaker — my f-father. I don’t understand after the way he treated her, but I think she’s still in love with him … always has been probably. And now she doesn’t know what to do for the best.’ She came closer to me then, touched my arm in a gesture of entreaty. ‘Please, Mr Grant, you’ve got to do something. You’ve got to help us. I’m scared to death Mother will go to the police and tell them what David said. That’s what she wanted to do, right away. She said it was her duty, but I knew it wasn’t that. She’s just about out of her mind as a result of what David’s done already. And he does have a bad record, you know. So I said I’d come to you and she promised she wouldn’t do anything until I got home.’ And she stood back, drained, her large eyes staring at me expectantly.
I didn’t know what to say. There was nothing I could do. No point in my going out and searching the city for him. A filthy night like this the whole police force would have their work cut out to track him down. ‘Where was it he escaped?’
‘Somewhere along the Cowbridge Road, they said.’
‘And your father — have you any idea how I can get in touch with him?’